


Useful

by igrockspock



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Star Wars: A New Hope, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: To earn her place on theFalcon, Leia has to be useful, so she tries to learn everything she can.





	Useful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancslove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancslove/gifts).



> Hello ancslove! I really enjoyed your request about daily life in the rebellion, and I hope you enjoy this treat!

Leia Organa spoke six languages fluently and knew the basics in a dozen more. She was an outstanding negotiator, knowledgeable in arcane parliamentary procedures, and prepared to eat anything that was put in front of her -- no matter whether it was alive or dead, cooked or raw, freshly picked or ritually fermented in an underground chamber for five hundred ninety-six days. In short, she was an excellent princess.

But even if she hadn’t been, her family would have loved her. Even if she had been a scandalous and embarrassing princess, like her great-grandmother Artesia, or a dimwitted spice addict like her cousin Rollin, she could have returned to the palace at night and felt at home. That security vanished the instant Alderaan disappeared from the sky.

To keep a place in the Rebellion, she had to be useful, so she learned everything she could: how to aim a double-barreled blaster rifle, how to solder warped deck plates, how to calibrate the blast canon and run a kilometer in less than four minutes.

At night, when she couldn’t stop seeing Alderaan explode in front of her eyes, she counted all the things she could do and reminded herself that the Rebellion would never, ever ask her to leave.

When she stumbled bleary-eyed from her bunk on the _Falcon_ , she knew which alarm was ringing and which macrofuser to grab. She tossed it to Han with one hand and flipped a couple fuses with the other. Then she picked up the fire extinguisher just in case.

The alarms stopped seconds before the _Falcon_ exploded -- just as they always did -- and Han leaned against the bulkhead, taking in her pajama shorts, her mussed hair, and the spot of grease on her cheek. She pulled her shoulders straight, ready to fight.

Instead he said, “Not bad for a princess. Whaddya think Chewie, should we keep her?”

Chewie growled something and rubbed an affectionate paw over her hair, and the next morning, Leia found her name stamped on the door outside her bunk.

***

She met Luke in the galley at 0700, as usual. Unlike Chewie and Han, he understood that no one should speak to her until she’d had her caf, and he knew that she was going to give him the blue milk from her ration pack because no other sentient being in the galaxy liked to drink it.

Luke said, “I heard you officially joined the crew last night.”

Leia rolled her eyes, because the placard outside her bunk said _Her Royal Highness_ and also she still had two sips of caf left, so Luke was violating the rules.

Luke was not deterred by her frostiness, which was both a relief and an annoyance. He looked around the galley slowly, peering out the corridor that lead to the viewports. At length he asked, “What do you think? Could this be home?”

She couldn’t say exactly how she knew Luke was asking for the both of them. Sometimes she thought there was a weird tether between them, but more often, she thought she was sad about Alderaan in a way that verged on pathetic. She swallowed the last of her caf and said, “I suppose it could be. If we’re useful.”

She downloaded a maintenance manual for Correllian Y-class freighters later that day, just in case.

***

The next time the alarms went off, Leia didn’t know what to do. She got out of her bunk and she rushed to the power converters, because those were the most frequent emergencies. When no one was there, she went for the main power core, but that wasn’t the problem either. Finally she found Chewie, Han, and Luke gathered in the maintenance crawlway outside the main life support station.

Luke said, “This is kind of like the moisture vaporators back home,” and then he vanished down some hatch.

Leia scrambled to find the right tools, but this wasn’t a job for a macrofuser or a hydrospanner or anything else she’d seen before. Eventually Chewie ran for the cockpit, but she didn’t follow; there was no point when she could barely fly.

When the alarms stopped, she slunk back toward the galley, feeling useless. Han and Luke and Chewie followed not long after, exchanging friendly punches and high fives because they’d saved everyone’s lives together.

Han stared at her with his customary smirk. “What’s the matter, Princess? Afraid of a little emergency decompression?”

Leia swallowed her pride and said, “I owe you an apology, Captain Solo. I didn’t understand the life support system well enough to assist in its repair.” 

How embarrassing that she’d used her study time so poorly. Obviously the systems that kept them alive were the most important, but she’d done little more than memorize the specs: Corelstand C8 Life Support Module. Whatever that meant.

Han was already uncorking a bottle of something brown and pungent, never mind that it was 0300 hours. “Can I have the first part on tape?” he asked. “Actually, I don’t even need the recording. Could you just say it out loud one more time?”

Leia cleared her throat. “I should have read further in the maintenance manual. I apologize.”

Han turned to Luke and asked, “Is she possessed?”

Luke said, “Um, I don’t think so?” He turned toward her and asked, “Are you okay?”

That was Leia’s least favorite question in the entire galaxy, and she stomped back toward the bunk with her name on it, even though she hadn’t earned her place after all.

***

Han found her crouched over the maintenance manual in the galley two days later. It was after 0100 hours, and her eyes were getting bleary, but she’d managed to reconstruct the study program her tutors had taught her years ago. _Start with the vocabulary. Highlight unfamiliar words in red. Practice using them in context._ The trouble was, the holographic list of red words shimmering beside her was almost as tall as she was. She knew nothing about mechanics. Nothing at all.

She didn’t even realize Han was there until he waved a hand in front of her face, dissolving the hovering words.

“What are you _doing_?” he asked, toggling off the manual.

“I didn’t take you for one to ask obvious questions,” she snapped. Then, mostly to herself, she muttered, “I have a PhD. I should be able to understand this.”

“You have a _PhD_?” Han asked, settling onto the couch beside her. “I could be calling you Doctor Princess?”

“In interplanetary relations,” she said. “And don’t.”

Han stared at her in disbelief. “You’re nineteen and you have a doctorate. You’re a princess and you were a Senator and you probably will be again after this is all over. And the maintenance manual for a Correllian Y-class freighter is keeping you up at night?” 

Leia gritted her teeth. Was he really going to make her explain that she _wanted_ to stay here? She wanted to wake up in the morning and trade ration packs with Luke. She wanted Han to smirk at her and Chewie to howl and pat her hair. She wanted to know she had one place in the galaxy where she belonged, preferably by the side of people who would survive the war, and to do all that, she had to earn her place. She had to be the opposite of a princess; she had to be useful.

Han stared at her, understanding slowly dawning on his face. “You wanna learn this, I’ll teach you, Princess. But we don’t throw family out the airlock if they can’t repair an acceleration compensator.”

Before she could think about too long, Leia threw her arms around Han. “Thank you,” she muttered against his chest, already feeling foolish.

Han froze for a minute, probably waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t come, he dropped an arm around her shoulders and said, “You are the most confusing person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of people.”

At that, Leia pulled herself up straight and managed a smile. “Good,” she said.

She felt Han’s eyes on her as she walked toward the door and decided that she liked it. She looked over her shoulder and said, “I will throw you out the airlock if you _ever_ call me Doctor Princess.” 

Han smiled at her -- a real, actual smile that showed white teeth against tanned skin and definitely did not make her stomach flip. “Your Royal Highness it is.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Useful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199497) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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